An anti-bird flu network will soon be set up in Bangkok and operate around the clock, according to the Thai News Agency Thursday.

Addressing some 300 medical professionals from public and private hospitals and health care units, Public Health Minister Pinit Jarusombat was quoted by the agency as saying that the coordinating network will be based at Rajvithi Hospital and that staff will be on duty 24 hours a day to assure that bird flu and possible human influenza will be immediately put under control and stopped from breaking out in the provinces.

Members of the public are advised to contact the network which is to be under care of the Department of Medical Science via an Internet website operated by the Ministry of Public Health at www. dms.moph.go.th.

Physicians attached to the network will give medical advice to private and public hospitals and health care units nationwide so they could promptly and correctly treat bird flu patients -- at any hour of the day or night.

Only five persons in Thailand had reportedly contracted bird flu last year, two of whom were pronounced dead, the public health minister disclosed.

Meanwhile, possibilities that the bird flu might mutate and thus be contractible from human to human should not be ruled out scientifically, said Dr. Thawat Suntrajarn, director general of the Department of Disease Control, although no incidence of human- to-human spread of bird flu has been verified.

Source: Xinhua